Tutorial 10 – Data Driven Testing in Cucumber BDD
What you will Learn :
Data Driven Testing using ‘Examples’ keyword plus ‘Scenario Outline’
Data Driven Testing using ‘Examples’ keyword plus ‘Scenario Outline’
Let us create a brand new feature file having ‘Login feature’.
If you are writing ‘Scenario Outline’, you have to use ‘Examples’ keyword, see below. These 2 go hand-in-hand. You cannot use ‘Examples’ keyword with normal ‘Scenario’ that we have been writing so far.
So, if you really want to use the concept of data driven testing, you can achieve with the help of ‘Examples’ keyword and you have to use ‘Scenario Outline’.
Save the file.
The ‘Examples’ table acts like a test data table for us. It contains multiple set of test data to test our application
Now, in the above ‘Scenario Outline’, look at line numbers 7 and 8. We have written “<Username>” and “<Password>”. So these are string values because these are written within double quotes
Now, the <Username> that you see in the figure above is actually the column name that we have written in the ‘Examples’ table. Similar is the case with <Password>. These should be an exact match. You cannot write <Username> in line number 7 and USERNAME in ‘Examples’ table. 
So the entire scenario will be executed 2 times since wehave 2 rows in our ‘Examples’ table
So, this is the concept of data driven testing in cucumber.
Let us run our feature file to generate our step definition methods
Copy the methods from console
Create a step definition file and paste the above methods
Import the methods and remove the exceptions
Save the file
Let us re-run our feature file
Notice the console output. The scenario got executed twice. The username/password was picked up from the ‘Examples’ table.
Also, 14 steps got passed since we have 7 steps in a scenario. This would be multiplied by 2 rows in the table, hence 14 steps
So, invalidusername/98765 was picked up in first scenario execution and way2automation/invalidpassword was picked up in second scenario execution
Let us now take another example wherein both the rows have only numeric values, see below
Save the file and run it
Copy the step definition code
Create step def file and paste the code. Import the packages and remove the exceptions
Save the file
Re-run the feature file
Notice the console o/p. The scenario got executed twice as expected and 10 steps got passed
So this is how we use the ‘Scenario Outline’ and ‘Examples’ keyword combination to execute data driven testing in cucumber.
Thank you for reading!